by Rick Riordan
My mom sighed. ‘Not so much now. When I was younger it was easier. But, yes, I’ve always been able to see more than was good for me. It’s one of the things that caught your father’s attention, when we first met. Just be careful. Promise me you’ll be safe.’
‘We’ll try, Ms Jackson,’ Annabeth said. ‘Keeping your son safe is a big job, though.’ She folded her arms and glared out of the kitchen window. I picked at my napkin and tried not to say anything.
My mom frowned. ‘What’s going on with you two? Have you been fighting?’
Neither of us said anything.
‘I see,’ my mom said, and I wondered if she could see through more than just the Mist. It sounded like she understood what was going on with Annabeth and me, but I sure as heck didn’t. ‘Well, remember,’ she said, ‘Grover and Tyson are counting on you two.’
‘I know,’ Annabeth and I said at the same time, which embarrassed me even more.
My mom smiled. ‘Percy, you’d better use the phone in the hall. Good luck.’
I was relieved to get out of the kitchen, even though I was nervous about what I was about to do. I went to the phone and placed the call. The number had washed off my hand a long time ago, but that was okay. Without meaning to, I’d memorized it.
We arranged a meeting in Times Square. We found Rachel Elizabeth Dare in front of the Marriott Marquis, and she was painted gold completely.
I mean her face, her hair, her clothes – everything. She looked like she’d been touched by King Midas. She was standing like a statue with five other kids all painted metallic – copper, bronze, silver. They were frozen in different poses while tourists hustled past or stopped to stare. Some passers-by threw money at the tarp on the sidewalk.
The sign at Rachel’s feet said, urban art for kids, donations appreciated.
Annabeth and I stood there for, like, five minutes, staring at Rachel, but if she noticed us she didn’t let on. She didn’t move or even blink as far as I could see. Being ADHD and all, I could not have done that. Standing still that long would’ve driven me crazy. It was weird to see Rachel in gold, too. She looked like a statue of somebody famous, an actress or something. Only her eyes were normal green.
‘Maybe if we push her over,’ Annabeth suggested.
I thought that was a little mean, but Rachel didn’t respond. After another few minutes, a kid in silver walked up from the hotel taxi stand, where he’d been taking a break. He took a pose like he was lecturing the crowd, right next to Rachel. Rachel unfroze and stepped off the tarp.
‘Hey, Percy.’ She grinned. ‘Good timing! Let’s get some coffee.’
We walked down to a place called the Java Moose on West 43rd. Rachel ordered an Espresso Extreme, the kind of stuff Grover would like. Annabeth and I got fruit smoothies and we sat at a table right under the stuffed moose. Nobody even looked twice at Rachel in her golden outfit.
‘So,’ she said. ‘It’s Annabelle, right?’
‘Annabeth,’ Annabeth corrected her. ‘Do you always dress in gold?’
‘Not usually,’ Rachel said. ‘We’re raising money for our group. We do volunteer art projects for elementary kids ’cause they’re cutting art from the schools, you know? We do this once a month, take in about five hundred dollars on a good weekend. But I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about that. You’re a half-blood, too?’
‘Shhh!’ Annabeth said, looking around. ‘Just announce it to the world, how about?’
‘Okay.’ Rachel stood up and said, really loud, ‘Hey, everybody! These two aren’t human! They’re half Greek god!’
Nobody even looked over. Rachel shrugged and sat down. ‘They don’t seem to care.’
‘That’s not funny,’ Annabeth said. ‘This isn’t a joke, mortal girl.’
‘Hold it, you two,’ I said. ‘Just calm down.’
‘I’m calm,’ Rachel insisted. ‘Every time I’m around you, some monster attacks us. What’s to be nervous about?’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about the band room. I hope they didn’t kick you out or anything.’
‘Nah. They asked me a lot of questions about you. I played dumb.’
‘Was it hard?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Okay, stop!’ I intervened. ‘Rachel, we’ve got a problem. And we need your help.’
Rachel narrowed her eyes at Annabeth. ‘You need my help?’
Annabeth stirred her straw in her smoothie. ‘Yeah,’ she said sullenly. ‘Maybe.’
I told Rachel about the Labyrinth, and how we needed to find Daedalus. I told her what had happened the last few times we’d gone in.
‘So you want me to guide you,’ she said. ‘Through a place I’ve never been.’
‘You can see through the Mist,’ I said. ‘Just like Ariadne. I’m betting you can see the right path. The Labyrinth won’t be able to fool you as easily.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘Then we’ll get lost. Either way, it’ll be dangerous. Very, very dangerous.’
‘I could die?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you said monsters don’t care about mortals. That sword of yours –’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Celestial bronze doesn’t hurt mortals. Most monsters would ignore you. But Luke… he doesn’t care. He’ll use mortals, demigods, monsters, whatever. And he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.’
‘Nice guy,’ Rachel said.
‘He’s under the influence of a Titan,’ Annabeth said defensively. ‘He’s been deceived.’
Rachel looked back and forth between us. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’m in.’
I blinked. I hadn’t figured it would be so easy. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Hey, my summer was going to be boring. This is the best offer I’ve had yet. So what do I look for?’
‘We have to find an entrance to the Labyrinth,’ Annabeth said. ‘There’s an entrance at Camp Half-Blood, but you can’t go there. It’s off-limits to mortals.’
She said mortals like it was some sort of terrible condition, but Rachel just nodded. ‘Okay. What does an entrance to the Labyrinth look like?’
‘It could be anything,’ Annabeth said. ‘A section of wall. A boulder. A doorway. A sewer entrance. But it would have the mark of Daedalus on it. A Greek Delta, glowing in blue.’
‘Like this?’ Rachel drew the symbol Δ in water on our table.
‘That’s it,’ Annabeth said. ‘You know Greek?’
‘No,’ Rachel said. She pulled a big blue plastic hairbrush from her pocket and started brushing the gold out of her hair. ‘Let me get changed. You’d better come with me to the Marriott.’
‘Why?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Because there’s an entrance like that in the hotel basement, where we store our costumes. It’s got the mark of Daedalus.’
14 My Brother Duels Me to The Death
The metal door was half hidden behind a laundry bin full of dirty hotel towels. I didn’t see anything strange about it, but Rachel showed me where to look, and I recognized the faint blue symbol etched in the metal.
‘It hasn’t been used in a long time,’ Annabeth said.
‘I tried to open it once,’ Rachel said, ‘just out of curiosity. It’s rusted shut.’
‘No.’ Annabeth stepped forward. ‘It just needs the touch of a half-blood.’
Sure enough, as soon as Annabeth put her hand on the mark, it glowed blue. The metal door unsealed and creaked open, revealing a dark staircase leading down.
‘Wow.’ Rachel looked calm, but I couldn’t tell if she was pretending or not. She’d changed into a ratty Museum of Modern Art T-shirt and her regular marker-coloured jeans, her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket. Her red hair was tied back, but she still had flecks of gold in it, and traces of the gold glitter on her face. ‘So… after you?’
‘You’re the guide,’ Annabeth said with mock politeness. ‘Lead on.’
The stairs led down to a large brick tunnel. It was so dark I couldn’t see furth
er than a metre in front of us, but Annabeth and I had restocked on flashlights. As soon as we switched them on, Rachel yelped.
A skeleton was grinning at us. It wasn’t human. It was huge, for one thing – at least two and a half metres tall. It had been strung up, chained by its wrists and ankles so it made a kind of giant X over the tunnel. But what really sent a shiver down my back was the single black eye socket in the centre of its skull.
‘A Cyclops,’ Annabeth said. ‘It’s very old. It’s not… anybody we know.’
It wasn’t Tyson, she meant. But that didn’t make me feel much better. I still felt like it had been put here as a warning. Whatever could kill a grown Cyclops, I didn’t want to meet.
Rachel swallowed. ‘You have a friend who’s a Cyclops?’
‘Tyson,’ I said. ‘My half-brother.’
‘Your half-brother?’
‘Hopefully we’ll find him down here,’ I said. ‘And Grover. He’s a satyr.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice was small. ‘Well then, we’d better keep moving.’
She stepped under the skeleton’s left arm and kept walking. Annabeth and I exchanged looks. Annabeth shrugged. We followed Rachel deeper into the maze.
After fifteen metres we came to a crossroads. Ahead, the brick tunnel continued. To the right, the walls were made of ancient marble slabs. To the left, the tunnel was earth and tree roots.
I pointed left. ‘That looks like the tunnel Tyson and Grover took.’
Annabeth frowned. ‘Yeah, but the architecture to the right – those old stones – that’s more likely to lead to an ancient part of the maze, towards Daedalus’s workshop.’
‘We need to go straight,’ Rachel said.
Annabeth and I both looked at her.
‘That’s the least likely choice,’ Annabeth said.
‘You don’t see it?’ Rachel asked. ‘Look at the floor.’
I saw nothing except well-worn bricks and mud.
‘There’s a brightness there,’ Rachel insisted. ‘Very faint. But forward is the correct way. To the left, further down the tunnel, those tree roots are moving like feelers. I don’t like that. To the right, there’s a trap about seven metres down. Holes in the walls, maybe for spikes. I don’t think we should risk it.’
I didn’t see anything like what she was describing, but I nodded. ‘Okay. Forward.’
‘You believe her?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’
Annabeth looked like she wanted to argue, but she waved at Rachel to lead on. Together we kept walking down the brick corridor. It twisted and turned, but there were no more side tunnels. We seemed to be angling down, heading deeper underground.
‘No traps?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Nothing.’ Rachel knitted her eyebrows. ‘Should it be this easy?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It never was before.’
‘So, Rachel,’ Annabeth said, ‘where are you from, exactly?’
She said it like, What planet are you from? But Rachel didn’t look offended.
‘Brooklyn,’ she said.
‘Aren’t your parents going to be worried if you’re out late?’
Rachel exhaled. ‘Not likely. I could be gone a week and they’d never notice.’
‘Why not?’ This time Annabeth didn’t sound as sarcastic. Having trouble with parents was something she understood.
Before Rachel could answer, there was a creaking noise in front of us, like huge doors opening.
‘What was that?’ Annabeth asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said. ‘Metal hinges.’
‘Oh, that’s very helpful. I mean, what is it?’
Then I heard heavy footsteps shaking the corridor – coming towards us.
‘Run?’ I asked.
‘Run,’ Rachel agreed.
We turned and fled the way we’d come, but we hadn’t made it six metres before we ran straight into some old friends. Two dracaenae – snake women in Greek armour – levelled their javelins at our chests. Standing between them was Kelli, the empousa cheerleader.
‘Well, well,’ Kelli said.
I uncapped Riptide, and Annabeth pulled her knife, but before my sword was even out of pen form Kelli pounced on Rachel. Her hand turned into a claw and she spun Rachel around, holding her tight, with her talons at Rachel’s neck.
‘Taking your little mortal pet for a walk?’ Kelli asked me. ‘They’re such fragile things. So easy to break!’
Behind us, the footsteps came closer. A huge form appeared out of the gloom – a three-metre-tall Laistrygonian giant with red eyes and fangs.
The giant licked his lips when he saw us. ‘Can I eat them?’
‘No,’ Kelli said. ‘Your master will want these. They will provide a great deal of entertainment.’ She smiled at me. ‘Now march, half-bloods. Or you all die here, starting with the mortal girl.’
It was pretty much my worst nightmare. And believe me I’ve had plenty of nightmares. We were marched down the tunnel flanked by dracaenae, with Kelli and the giant at the back, just in case we tried to run for it. Nobody seemed to worry about us running forward. That was the direction they wanted us to go.
Up ahead I could see bronze doors. They were about three and a half metres tall, emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords. From behind them came a muffled roar, like a crowd.
‘Oh, yessssss,’ said the snake woman on my left. ‘You’ll be very popular with our hossssst.’
I’d never got to look at a dracaena up close before, and I wasn’t thrilled to have the opportunity. She would’ve had a beautiful face, except her tongue was forked and her eyes were yellow with black slits for pupils. She wore bronze armour that stopped at her waist. Below that, where her legs should’ve been, were two massive snake trunks, mottled bronze and green. She moved by a combination of slithering and walking, as if she were on living skis.
‘Who’s your host?’ I asked.
She hissed, which might have been a laugh. ‘Oh, you’ll sssssee. You’ll get along famousssly. He’ssss your brother, after all.’
‘My what?’ Immediately I thought of Tyson, but that was impossible. What was she talking about?
The giant pushed past us and opened the doors. He picked up Annabeth by her shirt and said, ‘You stay here.’
‘Hey!’ she protested, but the guy was twice her size and he’d already confiscated her knife and my sword.
Kelli laughed. She still had her claws at Rachel’s neck. ‘Go on, Percy. Entertain us. We’ll wait here with your friends to make sure you behave.’
I looked at Rachel. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get you out of this.’
She nodded as much as she could with a demon at her throat. ‘That would be nice.’
The dracaenae prodded me towards the doorway at javelin-point, and I walked out onto the floor of an arena.
I guess it wasn’t the largest arena I’d ever been in, but it seemed pretty spacious considering the whole place was underground. The dirt floor was circular, just big enough that you could drive a car around the rim if you pulled it really tight. In the centre of the arena, a fight was going on between a giant and a centaur. The centaur looked panicked. He was galloping around his enemy, using sword and shield, while the giant swung a javelin the size of a telephone pole and the crowd cheered.
The first tier of seats was four metres above the arena floor. Plain stone benches wrapped all the way around, and every seat was full. There were giants, dracaenae, demigods, telkhines and stranger things: bat-winged demons and creatures that seemed half human and half you name it – bird, reptile, insect, mammal.
But the creepiest things were the skulls. The arena was full of them. They ringed the edge of the railing. Metre-high piles of them decorated the steps between the benches. They grinned from pikes at the back of the stands and hung on chains from the ceiling like horrible chandeliers. Some of them looked very old – nothing but bleached-white bone. Others looked a lot fresher. I’m not going to describe them. Bel
ieve me, you don’t want me to.
In the middle of all this, proudly displayed on the side of the spectators’ wall, was something that made no sense to me – a green banner with the trident of Poseidon in the centre. What was that doing in a horrible place like this?
Above the banner, sitting in a seat of honour, was an old enemy.
‘Luke,’ I said.
I’m not sure he could hear me over the roar of the crowd, but he smiled coldly. He was wearing camouflage combat trousers, a white T-shirt and a bronze breastplate, just like I’d seen in my dream. But he still wasn’t wearing his sword, which I thought was strange. Next to him sat the largest giant I’d ever seen, much larger than the one on the floor fighting the centaur. The giant next to Luke must’ve been five metres tall, easy, and so wide he took up three seats. He wore only a loincloth, like a sumo wrestler. His skin was dark red and tattooed with blue wave designs. I figured he must be Luke’s new bodyguard or something.
There was a cry from the arena floor, and I jumped back as the centaur crashed to the ground beside me.
He met my eyes pleadingly. ‘Help!’
I reached for my sword, but it had been taken from me and hadn’t reappeared in my pocket yet.
The centaur struggled to get up as the giant approached, his javelin ready.
A taloned hand gripped my shoulder. ‘If you value your friendsss’ livesss,’ my dracaena guard said, ‘you won’t interfere. This isssn’t your fight. Wait your turn.’
The centaur couldn’t get up. One of his legs was broken. The giant put his huge foot on the horseman’s chest and raised the javelin. He looked up at Luke. The crowd cheered, ‘DEATH! DEATH!’
Luke didn’t do anything, but the tattooed sumo dude sitting next to him rose. He smiled down at the centaur, who was whimpering, ‘Please! No!’
Then the sumo dude held out his hand and gave the ‘thumbs down’ sign.
I closed my eyes as the gladiator giant thrust his javelin. When I looked again, the centaur was gone, disintegrated to ashes. All that was left was a single hoof, which the giant took up as a trophy and showed to the crowd. They roared their approval.
